Question About Inquarting

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Avery

Member
Joined
Oct 6, 2020
Messages
24
Hi,

I'm a newbie getting ready to make my first attempt at smelting some 10K and 14K jewelry. I was browsing one of the tutorials about inquarting and noticed that it was said that silver is better for inquarting than copper due to the amount of nitric acid needed. Based on some YouTube videos I had found prior to this forum, I had planned on using copper but now I'm questioning that decision.

So my question is this...I don't have "pure" silver that I could use for inquarting but I do have a crapload of pre-1965 dimes. Would it be worth just dropping those in gold for inquarting even though they have 10% copper and 90% silver or would I be better off just going with the pure copper and maybe go with silver the next time?

I haven't read much about smelting silver to get it pure but that's what I had planned to do with the dimes after I had attempted the gold smelting. Would I be better off smelting the silver dimes to get pure silver first and if so, does anyone know of a forum or resource to provide information on the most efficient way to do that?

Thanks,
Michael
 
Welcome to the forum Michael!

As you have learned, copper takes over 3 times as much nitric to dissolve it than the same weight of silver. It has another advantage, that if there is any platinum in your karat gold, it will "follow" the silver in a nitric leach. It's an odd property, because platinum by itself will not be touched by nitric, but when alloyed with silver it can dissolve. This helps to separate the platinum from the gold before you dissolve the gold.

Yes, pre-1965 coins will work well for inquarting just as they are. Sure, there is 10% copper there, but the 90% silver content will still save you a lot of nitric. There is no need to refine the silver first, as you would essentially "waste" nitric dissolving it, only to use it to inquart, then dissolve it a second time.

Having said that, I never refine my silver coins. As they are, they are "self assaying", meaning that everyone knows exactly what they are. Once you refine them, you end up with a silver blob or ingot that no one can be sure of the purity unless someone pays for an assay.

By the way, you probably mean melting, not smelting. Melting simply uses heat to turn a solid metal to a liquid. Smelting uses chemical fluxes along with the heat that will cause chemical reactions within the melted metals. For information about the terminology we use here, take a look at A Glossary of Common Terms.

Dave
 
Thanks for the reply Dave. I know I have a lot to learn so I’m trying to make sure I am at least decently educated on the subject before I just jump right in smelting or melting.

So now smelting vs. melting. I plan on using AR, sodium metabisulfate, urea, borax, and my fancy little magnetic stirrer/hot plate further down the process. Wouldn’t that be smelting? I’m going for the highest purity I can attain.
 
Avery, I think you are confusing wet chemical refining with smelting.
Smelting is performing chemistry in a molten bath of metal by adding oxidizing / reducing fluxes or a mix of different fluxes. This to alter the composition of the alloy or the ore. Basically oxidizing the base metals in the molten alloy to slag them off or reducing oxides to melt in with a collector metal.
This is a book on its own.

Melting is just that: heating, melting, and pour in an ingot mold or casting mold.

What you are talking about is, wet chemistry, I believe called hydrometallurgy, is what we discuss here the most.

Martijn.
 
Thanks Martijn. The more questions I ask the more hesitant I am to attempt my first try.
 
That's actuallty the right attitude Avery. Happy to hear you are first taking your time to learn.
But don't let it discourage you. You need to study first and try small tests to get a feel for it.

Forget Urea. If you don't use too much nitric in the Aqua Regia, you don't need it. Sulfamic acid is recommended most here to neutralize excess nitric.
Never premix AR. Because it's almost always too much nitric, which is a waste of money and usefull acid.

Besides safety and the importance of a fume hood, for inquarting you first need to learn how to deal with waste:
https://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=1300
This will also help you understand how to recover the silver from the solution by cementing.

A tip: When rinsing the gold sponge after the nitric bath, use distilled water to avoid the creation of insoluble silver chloride. You don't want AgCl in you AR gold digestion.

Some prefer to convert the silver nitrate in the decanted solution into silver chloride and then rinse the base metal salts out and then convert it back it into elemental silver. That requires the lye and sugar conversion, Which is also very well explained by Streetips in one of his video's.
In your case, i would try cementing on copper first.

After AR, cooling and filtering, dropping with SMB, and Harold's rinsing procedure, https://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=325, you don't need any flux or borax to melt your 3 or 4 nines fine pure gold powder. Only some borax to glaze the brand new clean crucible.

Make sure you get the right chemicals, It's Sodium Meta Bisulfite, not -sulfate, big difference.
And read what's on the bottle when you recieve it or use it..., we had someone throwing in sulfuric acid with silver in stead of nitric a while ago because of a wrong delivery. Can get quite dangerous.

You have some interesting reading to do.

Have fun, be safe,
Martijn.
 
Well, I do love in Kentucky and figure that if all these idiots around here can make meth without blowing themselves up (most of the time) surely I can handle this with a little prep.
 
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